Take My Advice

Tonight's child hygiene snafu was enough to shake me out of my non-blogging funk.

Take my advice: when What to Expect the First Year suggests rubbing mineral oil or petroleum jelly into baby's hair to remove her yellow, scaly cradle cap ... either live with the scales, or take the time to drive 2 minutes to Walgreen's and buy the mineral oil.

Do NOT use decide to use petroleum jelly just because that's what you have on hand. DON'T.

After 5 or 6 hair washings with regular baby shampoo, and 3 with a paste of baking soda mixed with baby shampoo (per interweb advice) she is only about 5% less greasy. Which still makes her as sticky and greasy as (fill in the blank - oil slick, 1950's teenage gangster's hairdo, VERY FULL POT OF VASELINE).

Should have snapped a photo but I was too traumatized working to quickly remove as much as a could, with household supplies we had on hand, given it was already running up on past bedtime by this point and I didn't have many options.

Verdict: on balance, interweb advice recommends cornstarch (and as I don't cook, I presently own none), followed by combinations of many non-baby friendly things like HOT water rinses, dish soap and multiple multiple shampoos.

They also say some will just absorb into a healthy scalp. Let's hope her scalp is SUPER healthy and starts to absorbin' quickly because I just feel terrible about putting her to bed like that tonight ... basically, dirtier than she's ever been going INTO a bath!

Mike accused me of "freaking out" but really, ladies, isn't our little girls' sweet smelling, soft hair out of the bath one of the highlights of mothering them? It is for me. I get a huge kick out of brushing it and I bury my head in her little fringe at her neck when I'm putting her to sleep.

Tonight it was like snuggling up with heavily glazed ham. And she looked ridiculous - it was all slicked down and awful. I was thinking, oh crap, Mike's not gonna want to try and clean it tomorrow until I get home, but he cannot take her to the grocery store looking like this!

Thankfully she's blissfully unaware of how yucky she looks. Before bed she was happy as ever, just grinning away under her balding old man's combover hairdo.

UPDATE: This morning, she woke up less greasy, though certainly not all shiny and fresh haired. I've downgraded her from glazed ham to day old porkchop.